On May 25, 2005, Nokia released a press release announcing the
Nokia 770 and promising an open development platform and collaboration
with the FLOSS community: "[t]he maemo development platform
(www.maemo.org) will provide Open Source developers and innovation
houses with the tools and opportunities to collaborate with Nokia on
future devices and OS releases in the Internet Tablet category." On
June 7, 2005, the Linux Journal interviewed Ari Jaaksi,
the head of Nokia's open source software operations. He
asserted that "[i]t is important that Linux for the 770 is not
controlled by any company."

These remarks have proven deceiving: the Maemo platform appears open
because it uses many FLOSS components and many FLOSS applications run
on it, however, the 770 distribution contains a number of essential
closed source components controlled exclusively by Nokia. This
prevents a free platform from appearing for two reasons: first, the
closed components are not easily replaced with free components; and
second, it would cause a split in the community. I contend that the
result is that it is more difficult for a free platform to appear for
the 770 than it otherwise would be for a similar proprietary device.

Given market pressures, it is understandable that Nokia relicenses a
number of closed source value added components that have no free
counterparts, e.g., their support for Real Audio and Flash. Yet, this
is not the extent of the proprietary software which comprises the
platform. Jaaksi notes that they "keep some limited parts of the
software that are very close to [their] hardware close (sic).
Examples of such components are the boot loader and battery charging."
Additionally, "[v]arious application user interfaces that provide the
Nokia user experience are closed source." By retaining control of
these components, Nokia provides a technical barrier to competing
platforms.

Jaaksi provides the key to preventing similar power-grabs in the
future:

It is important that certain components are licensed under an open
source license, such as LGPL, that allows us to integrate also (sic)
proprietary components on our platform.

Thus high level proprietary components can be integrated in a
FLOSS-based stack. As long as the stack allows such proprietary
components, it will be difficult to prevent such selfish behavior. If
libraries that implement new interfaces were instead licenced under
the terms of the GPL rather than the LGPL, proprietary vendors would
not be able to gain value from the work of the FLOSS community without
also contributing their enhancements back to the community. Stallman
further explains when not to use the LGPL.

The disadvantages of proprietary software are, however, clear to
Jaaksi:

We often requested bug fixes or modifications to the commercial
closed components on our platform. If the vendors didn't have the
capacity or will to fix the problem on time, we had few options. We
could not fix problems ourselves because the companies using closed
source didn't want us to access their source code.

Yet, the same critique has been systematically leveraged against
Nokia: this past April, May, August here and
here, September and October. But a stronger
critique can be made as well: because Nokia, not the community,
controls the distribution and has made it difficult to create a
competing one, they do not have to listen to the community: their
interests prevail and, as Murray Cumming has observed
(local), community members have a difficult time
getting even simple and correct patches integrated when these do not
directly forward Nokia's interests. Nokia clearly understands this
frustration and wishes to avoid it but they do not want to afford the
same independence to those who use their product; they want to impose
restrictions on their users which they do not want imposed on themselves.

Nokia's openness is hypocritical. It may, perhaps, be tolerated if
their contributions prove, on the whole, to be an asset to the FLOSS
community.

Nokia has contributed to the FLOSS community. They have hired
developers to not only adapt mainstream components to their
environment but to also improve them for the general community, e.g.,
Matchbox, D-BUS and Scratchbox.

As the device has been largely welcomed by the FLOSS community,
unlike, e.g., the Zaurus, they have demonstrated a desire for such a
platform. Given the rejection of the Zaurus, this may also suggest
that Nokia has provided the leadership and resources required to
realize such a platform which the community otherwise could not have.
On the other hand, the 770 and n800 are significantly more affordable
and more readily available than the Zaurus. Given that there are
three non-general purpose platforms which the FLOSS community has
developed which have exceeded their respective vendor's distribution,
OpenWRT for Linksys' WRT54G, RockBox for a growing number of
portable audio players and Slug for Linksys's NSLU2 network
storage appliance, it seems plausible that Nokia simply developed the
right hardware for the right price at the right time, i.e., they found
a market niche.

If the platform is as open as Nokia claims and if it is correct
that the community to develop a platform independently exists, then if
Nokia abandons the device, it should be possible for the community to
continue its maintenance as has happened for so many other devices.
This litmus test has recently been started: Nokia announced the end of
life for the 770 only a year and a half after its introduction. Yet
the question has been asked: given the amount of proprietary
dependencies how far will the community be able to continue developing
the device? It is unlikely that we will find out, however, as Nokia
has provided approximately 500 developers with n800 discount codes to
ensure that the community adopts the new device.

Nokia should be thanked for their contributions to the FLOSS
community, however, I contend that Nokia's half-openness presents a
greater liability to the FLOSS community than a typical closed
platform. Like the Sirens, the song of the 770 and n800 has allure:
they support free software applications and their platform appears to
be based on free software. Yet, they are not free software and the
community has little influence over its development. Indeed,
continuing development after abandonment appears problematic as Nokia
does not support the four freedoms.

Nokia has put on a likeable mask, yet they wish to continue to play by
the same rules that proprietary companies play by and retain control
of their platform. If Nokia continues to ignore the desires of the
community, sufficient momentum will eventually build and their
platform will be abandoned and their influence made redundant. If
Nokia wishes to remain a member of the FLOSS community in the long
run, they should remake themselves as an authentic community member.
In particular, they should release their proprietary software under a
free software license and provide community members more control over
the development of the platform.